OK, I'm going to pull together some disparate thoughts about Autechre, the Album Leaf and Midlake to make a bigger point about the validity (or lack thereof) of album reviews.

I'll start with Midlake because this whole thing started with Pitchfork's trashing of the band's new album, The Courage of Others, saying it "is a step down on songcraft, atmosphere, and apparently, even self-awareness." Writer Paul Thompson said the album "just feels so monochromatic, so flatlined, even the tiniest signs of life have no power to resuscitate."

I had heard the album early, finding a download back in December that I was eager to cue up. I liked it a lot, the songs reminding me of what I liked best about The Trials of Van Occupanter, the band's breakthrough sophomore disc. The review surprised me. I was expecting the typical fawning Pitchfork "best new music" tag, but instead found a dismissive 3.6 rating.

The review made headlines elsewhere. Stereogum commented on it, saying "Forget what you've heard: The '60s Brit folk-nodding The Courage Of Others is a beautifully downcast, pleasingly oddball trip." Of course, the only thing a Stereogum reader would have "heard" about the album was the Pitchfork review posted earlier in the day.

So, who is right? No one and everyone, of course. Music appreciation is subjective. That's clear even within the confines of Pitchfork. While one reviewer can't get past Midlake's consistency and monochromatic sound, another is willing to tolerate it in the Album Leaf. A day after the Midlake takedown, Ian Cohen gives Album Leaf's new A Chorus of Storytellers a 6.3. This despite the fact that "the beauty LaValle conjures is effortless but ultimately less impressive for not having any sort of contrast" (that's another way of saying "monochromatic, kids) and that "Album Leaf should never have to apologize for not rocking enough" (could that be something akin to "flatlined?").

Pitchfork can't even agree with itself on Midlake. Van Occupanther, the album that The Courage of Others is seen as a step down from, earned a 6.8 upon its release. Does that mean that Courage is only half as good as Van Occupanther? Of course not.

This brings me to Autechre. I have been getting into some electronica (or IDM or whatever else it's called), and have been grabbing everything the local library has in a bid to make up for a lot of lost time. I've read a lot of praise for Autechre, including comparisons between its work and that of Radiohead at its glitchiest. OK, I'm in. So, I picked up Quaristice, the band's latest album. I'll admit, the 7.5 rating on Pitchfork intrigued me. What would I give it? Maybe a 3.6. It just did nothing for me. And I can't fault anything more than the rating in Mark Richardson's review, for he was spot on: "Even while Quaristice is in some ways the most listenable album they've created in a decade, it's ultimately no easier to parse, and can be very rough going indeed if you're not in the mood for their peculiar world." Count me among those not in the mood.

So, what's the point? If you've read reviews at all, you already know it: They're the opinion of one listener, nothing more. A handful of people were disappointed by the Midlake album, giving it a negative review in part, it seems, because they expected a leap forward instead of a look back. Others of us really like it because it's more of what drew us to the group in the first place. My worry is that the negative reviews are shouted much more effectively than the praise. There is value in reviews all along the spectrum, no question. Here's hoping that people are savvy enough to take them as one input in the decision-making process and not ascribe them the power of arbiter.

Labels: criticism, music

Ten years ago today, the June 21 & 28, 1999 issue of the New Yorker hit the mailbox (yes, we get it late out here in flyover country). It was the fiction issue, though this one came with a twist: It identified 20 writers who were dubbed "The Future of American Fiction."

The list: Sherman Alexie, Donald Antrim, Ethan Canin, Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Tony Earley, Nathan Englander, Jeffrey Eugenidies, Jonathan Franzen, Allegra Goodman, A.M. Homes, Matthew Klam, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-Rae Lee, Rick Moody, Antonya Nelson, George Saunders, William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace.

With 10 years of hindsight, how did they do? Pretty well. There is one bona fied star in Chabon, several winners of prestigious prizes who also have bestsellers to their names (Eugenidies, Diaz and Lahiri) and plenty of critically acclaimed authors like Moody and Saunders. The late Wallace seems to deserve his own place as someone who, at one time or another, fit all three of those categories.

What is most striking, however, are the names that at one time seemed to guarantee excitement but which today sent me to Wikipedia to determine when their last publication occurred. Could Klam really not have published anything since 2000's Sam the Cat? Whatever happened to Englander? Or Antrim?

My own biases/myopia/limited tastes play a part to be sure. I know Goodman is a big name, but have never read a word beyond the story included here. I'm completely unfamiliar with the work of Nelson or Danticat, but know each has legions of fans.

As with all such lists, the most interesting thing is to look at who made it and who didn't. In the opening Talk of the Town essay in the issue, "Reading Ahead," then Fiction Editor Bill Buford writes that the magazine "set out to answer the question, 'Who are the 20 best young fiction writers in America today?' Does best mean 'most promising' or 'most accomplished'? We settled on a definition that includes both senses, and tried to accommodate the obvious names and the not-so-obvious."

They did limit themselves by considering only American authors age 40 and under. Even at the outset there was hedging, or at least a healthy caveat that admits such lists are dubious exercises. Such a list in 1899, Buford writes, would not have included Willa Cather or Edith Warton or Theodore Dreiser or Jack London or... you get the point.

Anyone could make a compelling argument for or against nearly all of the picks on the list, though one omission did strike me as odd. Tellingly, there is an ad for Stewart O'Nan's Prayers for the Dying on the bio page that lists the 20 who made the cut. O'Nan's output since would certainly merit strong consideration, as would that of a couple dozen other authors who were not selected.

A close look at the list shows that the magazine wasn't exactly taking chances with its choices. By 1999, Chabon had already published Wonder Boys and was at work on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Moody had penned three novels, incluing The Ice Storm and Purple America; and Vollmann had published nine works of fiction. Then again, Diaz had published just one story collection, and Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, had just been published.

There was precedent, too. Granta published its own list of the Best Young American Novelists in 1996, with six overlapping with the New Yorker list (Alexie, Canin, Danticat, Earley, Eugenidies and Franzen). Some obvious omissions from the New Yorker list, including O'Nan and Lorrie Moore, are present here.

Hindsight offers some comedy. Buford writes about the novel being "Oprahed," something selectee Franzen would learn about firsthand more than a year later when his book, The Corrections was selected for the TV star's vaunted book club. He expressed misgivings, she rescinded the invitation, and the book club's relationship with modern literary fiction (and, it seems, the populace's view of it) was never the same.

It was clearly a different time. The Talk of the Town piece that follows Buford's looks at Karl Rove, already being called "Bush's Brain," and the machinations he had under way that seemed to point to a presidential bid by the then-Texas governor. The Internet was nowhere near the force it is now, (there are actual ads without URLs at the bottom) and publishers still paid large advances and sent their authors on long book tours.

A good story is a good story, regardless of the time or contest, and many here are are top notch, making the issue a very compelling read. The only vexing thing is that five authors' stories are only teased, and appeared in each of the next five issues of the magazine. Actually, that's not the only vexing thing. As is too often the case with the New Yorker, at least five of these so-called short stories are actually novel excepts (such as Chabon's "The Hofzinser Club") though not billed as such.

In the end, the issue provides an interesting lens through which to view the turn of the century literary fiction landscape, capturing, fairly effectively, the consensus critical picks for success. Not all of those selected would be included on a list that sought to gather the best writers of the past decade, but all 20 moved forward from this point with significant work. We can be disappointed that Franzen has yet to follow up his 2001 novel, or that Earley has managed just one post-Jim the Boy novel this decade, but prolific folks like Alexie and Chabon somewhat make up for it.

Summing up his Talk of the Town piece, Buford seems to foresee the divergent futures of the chosen ones. "What is the future of American fiction We can't know. But the Polaroid of this generation, snapped as the century turns, offers a satisfying picture of a highly accomplished group of writers robustly taking on the stories of their Americanness."

Below is a list of the included stories along with their eventual home under the author's name. Those listed as "uncollected" may have appeared in anthologies, but have not been issued in a book by the author to the best of my knowledge.

"I Can Speak!TM" George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation
"Asset," David Foster Wallace, uncollected
"The Toughest Indian in the World" by Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World
"Hawaiian Night," Rick Moody, Demonology
"Raft in Water, Floating," A.M. Homes, Things You Should Know
"The Local Production of Cinderella," Allegra Goodman, uncollected
"The Saviors," William T. Vollmann, part of the novel Europe Central
"Party of One," Antonya Nelson, Nothing Right
"The Volunteers," Chang-Rae Lee, uncollected
"The Hofzinser Club," Michael Chabon, excerpt from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
"Vins Fins," Ethan Canin, uncollected
"An Actor Prepares," Donald Antrim, uncollected
"The Wide Sea," Tony Early, excerpt from Jim the Boy
"The Oracular Vulva," Jeffrey Eugenidies, excerpt from Middlesex
"OtraVida, OtraVez," Junot Diaz, uncollected
"The Failure," Jonathan Franzen, excerpt from The Corrections
"The Book of the Dead," Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker
"The Third and Final Continent," Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies
"Peep Show," Nathan Englander, uncollected
"Issues I Dealt With in Therapy," Matthew Klam, Sam the Cat

Labels: books, criticism, magazines

I read two short books recently that while linked in no one's mind but my own, neatly complement one another. The first is David Denby's Snark. The book has been earning more than its fair share of coverage, likely because it is a) short, b) easy to parse and c) sure to rile a large swath of its audience.

In the book, Denby, the New Yorker's film critic, addresses snark, something that is, well, see the thing is, he never really defines it. He spends plenty of time telling the reader what snark is not -- a definition that boils down to any social or political commentary with which he agrees -- but surprisingly little time telling us what it is. It's a sort of dangerous "I know it when I see it" argument that, as a good liberal, Denby ought to be above.

Contest interlude: Because Denby doesn't define snark, I'd like you to. The comment offering the best definition of snark by midnight Sunday wins a free copy of Snark. Let the games begin.

That's not to say the book isn't interesting. He fashions it as a sort of modern day answer to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark," a tangentially related poem that was told in eight "fits," an early term for a canto. Denby adopts that conceit, if not its form, calling his "a polemic in seven fits." Of course, his fits are more, well, fitting with today's term, for they read at times like a child throwing a tantrum. He reserves particular vitriol for bloggers, online commenters and sites like Gawker. These arguments -- which, if the subjects are to be believed, are wrong as often as not -- center on the notion that any critique without a larger motivation, usually political, is snark.

One bit of wrongheadedness comes at the expense of an acquaintance of mine, Patrick Beach, a writer with the Austin American-Statesmen. In a piece about Nancy Pelosi that he calls "hapless," Denby recounts that Beach wrote she was "arguably so left leaning that her parenthetical should be D-Beijing." "China is certain authoritarian, a nationalist-capitalist hybrid nightmare, but does it make much sense to see it as "left" any more?" he writes. "Moss is growing on Beach's keyboard."

Now, ignore the fact that his parting shot is, of course, snarky, and think of this: could it be a joke of geography, asserting that someone in California (Pelosi's home state) leaning very far to the left might find herself in China? Maybe. Or maybe Beach used a well-known trope to make a point, kind of like using moss as an antiquated indication of being out of touch. Whether I'm write or Denby is, he is clearly the one looking for offense and finding it all too easily.

And the other book, the one that complements Snark? It's Unpacking the Boxes, "a memoir of a life in poetry," by form Poet Laureate Donald Hall. In it, Hall wanders a meandering path through his writing past. If a book can have gravitas, this has it. It was a pleasure to join Hall as he recollected and recounted stories from his life that shaped him as a poet. In lesser hands it would be the offputting work of a name dropper, but Hall's reminiscence's are fond, rarely bitter. Someone with his life and career could surely find things to be snarky about if he so chose, but he doesn't, and the result is a book that made me eager to carve out a moment so I could return to my visit in Hall's world.

What does this have to do with Denby? He could learn a lesson or two from Hall. Denby misreads situations, overanalyzes and is quick to look for a slight. It's everything Hall, at least as indicated by Unpacking the Boxes, is not. And while one is posited as an important book -- that would be the one subtitled "It's Mean, It's Person and It's Ruining Our Conversation" -- the other is the one that tackles weighty topics with grace and humility. It is Hall that will stick with me, making me want to persevere and make the best of bad situations, and Denby who appeals to my baser self, all but urging me with his whining prose to call him dirty names.

Labels: books, criticism

I'm about a month late in posting this, but it has been a busy holiday season/year/week/etc.

So, better late than never, here is my list of the top 20 CDs of 2008. It might seem that one need be a white guy over the age of 40 to make this list, but that's ridiculous. That guy in Bon Iver isn't even 30 yet (let alone those kids in Vampire Weekend) and Alejandro Escovedo isn't white. So there.

1. Bob Dylan – Tell-Tale Signs (Columbia)

Best-of lists typically have separate categories for re-issues and compilations, but what about compilations of songs that haven’t been previously released? In the case of a collection as strong as Tell-Tale Signs, you say rules be damned and stick it at the top of your best CDs of the year list. As good as Dylan’s last three albums have been – and they have been awfully good – this is better. Mainly composed of songs that either weren’t included on those albums or versions that were left in the vault in favor of others, it is a surprisingly cohesive batch of tunes. If anything, it shows that Dylan isn’t his own best editor; several of the songs here are in versions far superior to the originally released takes. And even when that isn’t the case, such as “Mississippi” from Love and Theft, Dylan and his band still perform such radically different arrangements that, save for a similar melody and lyrics, it’s like a different song.

2. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)

It was hard coming up with a No. 2 pick for this year’s list, because there were few stellar standouts and a lot of great albums that seemed on par with each other. That said, Fleet Foxes rises to the top simply because its album transcends a lot of things to remain a fresh, vital listen. On first listen, Fleet Foxes sounded like the work of a My Morning Jacket cover band performing Shins songs as interpreted by Band of Horses. The soaring choruses, the reverb, the acoustic instruments… it all seemed as if it had been done before. But listening again (and again, and again), it became clear that there was much more here than pastiche or homage. The songs are solid, the massed choruses heavenly and the whole thing bears the hallmark of a great album: As soon as it’s done, you want to hear it again.

3. Randy Newman – Harps and Angels

I have joked that inclusion on this list requires two things: being white and being at least 40 years old. That’s not quite true, but inclusions like Randy Newman certainly give that impression. I came to Newman late – just this year, in fact. I’d always been somewhat familiar with his work, but he was an old guy writing songs that were too clever by half. What did I care? A solo live show followed by some quality time spent with his catalog convinced me I cared a lot. No, this isn’t an undisputed classic like 12 Songs or Sail Away, but it’s full of Newman’s witty, clever and catchy songs, and that merits a spot on any best-of list.

4. Nick Cave – Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!

This was a year of surprises. Artists I had given up on or ignored suddenly issued albums that were so good they forced me to listen. Nick Cave is the first, best example. I have friends who are huge fans, but I’ve never done more than dabble. Perhaps it was a matter of working out a few things with his Grinderman side project last year, but Cave roars out of the gate here with an album that, unlike past efforts, kept me hooked from top to bottom. Cave’s leering swagger of a voice is at full power here, and his band locks into a groove that doesn’t let up until the final track plays.

5. Matthew Ryan – Vs. the Silver State (00:02:59)

Matthew Ryan is the kind of artist for whom terms like “criminally ignored” are coined. Ryan came onto the scene in the late 1990s as a sort of proto-Springsteen, an angry young man with energy to burn and the voice of a man twice his age. Over time his profile lowered and his sound shifted dynamics. Volume was replaced by intensity, and his songs took on an emotional depth. Still, it was frustrating to know he had a great rock album in him that wasn’t being let out. Vs. the Silver State unleashes the beast, and finds him marrying the lyrical and emotional heft of his later work to the aural firepower of his debut. The result is a fantastic album that should have put him back on people’s radar.

6. David Byrne and Brian Eno – Everything that Happens Will Happen Today (Todo Mundo)

Another surprise. When former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and that band’s producer (and top-notch solo artist) Brian Eno first collaborated, it was on an avant garde world music-inspired collection. Here, they instead create something closer to Eno’s more recent solo work, with icy synths and jittery melodies over which Byrne sings his own lyrics. He humanizes Eno’s music in a way its creator never could, while Eno’s intricately crafted songs eschew the cutesiness that sometimes mars Byrne’s solo work. It’s an inspired pairing.

7. Stephen Malkmus – Real Emotional Trash (Matador)

With his latest album, the former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus seems to have fully embraced his role as a guitar hero. Six of the 10 songs here top five minutes, with the title track clocking in at 10 minutes. But there is no noodling here; these are tightly arranged songs. Some credit goes to new drummer Janet Weiss, the pulse behind the late lamented Sleater-Kinney. Fans with blindered tastes who prefer early Pavement would be hard-pressed to detect Malkmus’ presence here beyond his ever-laconic vocals. But for those who kept up all along, it feels like exactly where he has been headed since Pavement’s final album. As such, it’s no stretch to call it his best solo work, the one that best aligns intent and execution.

8. Okkervil River - The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar)

This disc was originally conceived as the second part of a two-disc release with last year’s The Stage Names. Despite that, it stands on its own. Things fell into place for this Austin, Texas, band with its 2005 album, Black Sheep Boy, and its winning streak continues here. Leader Will Sheff writes ramshackle tunes that feel perpetually ready to fall apart, but he keeps them together through the sheer force of his considerable personality. With elements of rock, folk, indie and turn of the (last) century balladeering, the band concocts music that is fun yet filling.

9. Alejandro Escovedo – Real Animal (Back Porch)

It is said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Alejandro Escovedo clearly takes that to heart. Over the course of a long career in music, the artist time and again has looked back on his own life and mined it for some of the most poignant, gut-wrenching music being made. On Real Animal, he looks at the music itself, offering a concept album of sorts about his own career. From stints with early punks the Nuns to the cowpunk of Rank and File and the stolen promise of the True Believers, a band he led with his brother, Javier, he touches on all of his near-misses at fame. Produced by kindred spirit Chuck Prophet, the disc crackles with energy and shows that no matter how inspiring those past moments were, Escovedo is more than able to equal them today.

10. Baseball Project – Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (Yep Roc)

Here’s the wildcard, a disc that shouldn’t work near as well as it does. A member of R.E.M. (Peter Buck) plays second fiddle to a couple of journeymen musicians known only to a hardcore few fans, performing songs written exclusively about the game of baseball? Well, thanks to the fanboy eye for detail employed by songwriters Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey, it works. The lyrics read like an oddball history of the sweet science, but non-fans who enjoy a good rock ’n’ roll rave up will find must as much to like. This is gritty, catchy and fun, and, pardon the pun, that adds up to a home run any day.

11. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)

12. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Lie Down In The Light (Drag City)

13. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive (Vagrant)

14. Sun Kil Moon – April (Caldo Verde)

15. The Broken West – Now or Heaven (Merge)

16. Damien Jurado – Caught in the Trees (Sub Pop)

17. R.E.M. – Accelerate (Warner Bros.)

18. TV on the Radio – Dear Science (Touch and Go)

19. Vampire Weekend – s/t (XL)

20. Coldplay - Viva La Vida (Capitol)

Labels: criticism, music

Two short-fiction heavyweights and an upstart who wrote one of the best books I read last year are the three finalists for the fifth annual Story Prize.

The annual award for short fiction has announced that Jhumpa Lahiri, Tobias Wolff and Joe Meno are the finalists for the 2008 award. They were selected from among 73 collections published by 56 different publishers or imprints.

Lahiri is nominated for Unaccustomed Earth, he second short story collection and her third book. Wolff's Our Story Begins is a new and selected collection that gathered 16 stories from previous collections and 10 new stories. Meno's Demons in the Spring is this innovative young writer's latest.

While I haven't read either Lahiri's or Wolff's books, I can highly recommend their work. Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies was masterful, and Wolff's three story collections that lend some of their pieces to Our Story Begins are uniformly excellent. Meno's book, my first -- but not last -- experience with his work, was fantastic. I must admit that I was turned off of his work without reading a word thanks to his early promotion and seemingly ridiculous titles like Hairstyles of the Damned. My loss. Demons in the Spring is the work of an assured writer, each of its 20 stories each creating a world that feels perfectly lived in completely different from the others. For added appeal, each is illustrated by a different comic or graphic artist, adding a pleasing dimension to the work.

Prize founder Julie Lindsey and director Larry Dark selected the finalists, and three judges will select the winner: Daniel Menaker,former executive editor-in-chief of Random House, fiction editor at The New Yorker, and an author; Rick Simonson of Seattle’s Elliott Bay Books who founded and directs the store’s reading series; and Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief and Animal Crackers and the editor of literary magazine One Story.

The winner will be announced at a March 4 event in New York. The winner will be presented with $20,000 and an engraved silver bowl; the two runners-up will each receive $5,000.

Past Story Prize winners are The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat (2005), The Hill Road by Patrick O’Keeffe (2006), The Stories of Mary Gordon by Mary Gordon (2007), and Like You’d Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard (2008).

Labels: books, criticism

Reading so many fawning reviews of R.E.M.'s Accelerate, due in stores tomorrow, made me question my own tepid reaction to the disc. Am I missing something? Am I expecting too much? Am I too critical? I'll admit that despite expressing my own ambivalence with the album, I've played little other than it and that great new Big Dipper anthology in the past two weeks. Of course, that's as much a factor of wanting even mediocre music from a favorite band when the alternative is actually having the time to seek out something new and rewarding (speaking only of the R.E.M. here; the Big Dipper is giddily transcendent. More on that next week).

The naysayers are lining up, however, giving some support to my thoughts about the ultimately disappointment the disc cultivates. Most telling is this post from (the other) Bill Wyman. Intrigued by the familiarity of the plaudits being heaped on Accelerate, he takes a tour through Rolling Stone's archives. All of those disappointing albums over the past decade, you know, the ones against which this is called a return to form? I won't steal Wyman's thunder, but suffice to say, as he does, "At this point, the implication is clear: As far as Rolling Stone is concerned, the band’s best work is ahead of it."

Idolator also weighs in, highlighting some of the purple prose being inked over the disc at various outlets. These songs, from a band "that has [its] fighting spirit back," a band whose "career isn't over yet," "cast an inescapable shadow."

All that said, I plan to attempt to hear it with fresh ears when I actually go to a store and pay cash for a compact disc (call me old fashioned) and slip the real thing into the player for the first time.

Labels: criticism, music, R.E.M.

Lists are meant to generate discussion, of course, and no list that seeks to represent each of the last 25 years with one indie-rock album could hope to be definitive. That said, the list featured on Entertainment Weekly's web site today, "The Indie Rock 25," is downright awful. There are some obvious picks, but much of it either selects albums that are far from the best/most interesting of the given year or are not the best album from the chosen act, which shows how artificial such an exercise can be.

Then again, when you set constraints like these, how can you win?

1. Only one album may represent each year.
2. All the bands had to have been signed to an independent label for the given album.
3. The term ''band'' must be taken literally.

This year's pick, Radiohead's In Rainbows, was an obvious choice. Such lists are tailor made to recognize the fact that a band like this has left its major-label home for indie-land, so it's no surprise, and one that's hard to argue. So is Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the pick for 2007, or Boys and Girls in America from the Hold Steady, the 2006 pick. From there, however, things occasionally go off the rails as often as not.

Bright Eyes in 2005, a year with Okkervil River, Antony and the Johnsons and Sufjan Stevens all making critically acclaimed and well-received discs? Please. And this has little to do with my inability to comprehend Connor Oberst's appeal, and more to do with the fact that he had made his impact long before and, with this tepid disc, came nowhere near the artistic heights of the aforementioned discs. Arcade Fire in 2004 makes sense, but again, the White Stripes' Elephant in 2003 is a strangely out-of-touch pick. It's really White Blood Cells or nothing for this group. That spot, for 2001, goes instead to the Shins, whose album that year, Oh, Inverted World, may have included the future hit "New Slang," but which didn't make a dent in the public consciousness the way it's follow-up, Chutes Too Narrow did in, you guessed it, 2003.

The rest of the list can be split into three groups: no brainers (1998's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel or 1994's Bee Thousand from Guided by Voices) miscast (Sleater-Kinney's relatively underwhelming The Hot Rock in 1999 as opposed to 1997's absolutely scorching Dig Me Out or the Smiths' Meat is Murder instead of the later, superior The Queen is Dead) and just plain wrong (no matter their parsing of things, My Bloody Valentine and the Pixies were major label bands on their respective releases, UK releases to the contrary).

The compilers seem to know all this, spending more time in each write up explaining why better and more appropriate albums were not picked than they do extolling the virtues of those that were. Still, the list does what it should, sparking the desire in fans to pull out old albums, listen to great music and discuss the merits.

Labels: criticism, lists, music

I'm not sure how prestigious this is given that I've never heard of it before, but the Story Prize has been awarded to Jim Shepard for his short story collection, Like You'd Understand, Anyway. The prize includes a $20,000 cash award, which is a nice little boost for a great writer who doesn't sell a lot of books. Oh, and he received an engraved silver bowl, too.

It's certainly a worthy book, an adventurous and ambitious collection that was among the best books I read in 2007. In my Monday Interview with Shepard in December, we talked about his stories, and I noted that they seemed like the result of challenges he had issued to himself.

"I think they are challenges to myself -- that's a nice way of putting it -- nearly always in terms of stretching the capacities of my empathetic imagination," he said. Going on to talk about a story in his previous collection, Love and Hydrogen, he continued, "A story narrated by John Ashcroft began with my fulminating about yet another one of his inconceivably bad decisions as attorney general, for example, and then asking myself, ‘How does he do something like that, and live with himself?’ And then asking myself the question more seriously, and deciding that I would read all about him and try to find out."

The Story Prize itself is a bit of a mystery. Information about its provenance on its web site states that it is "an annual book award honoring the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction with a $20,000 cash award. Each of two runners-up will receive $5,000. Eligible books must be written in English and first published in the United States during a calendar year."

Past winners are Edwidge Danticat in 2004 for The Dew Breaker, Patrick O'Keeffe in 2005 for The Hill Road and Mary Gordon in 2006 for The Stories of Mary Gordon.

There is some credibility behind the effort, however. Shepard was up against Tessa Hadley's Sunstroke and Other Stories and Vincent Lam's Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, while the contest was judged by author and critic David Gates, librarian Patricia Groh and editor and poet Meghan O'Rourke.

Labels: books, criticism

Neutral Milk Hotel's fantastic sophomore outing and swansong, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, came out 10 years ago this month, and the already heavily analyzed album is receiving even more publicity, praise and analysis. Slate comes up with most interesting analogy, referring to reclusive NMH leader Jeff Magnum as "the Salinger of Indie Rock" in a piece that explores Magnum's decision to drop out and refuse to follow his critical darling with more music.

Pitchfork has the most comprehensive coverage I've seen, with Mike McGonigal's 1997 cover interview from the late lamented Puncture, a piece that is notable for coming just before the album's release and thus before the overwhelming critical and fan-based response that likely had the unintended effect of pushing Magnum underground. I know I read the piece as a Puncture fan who liked but didn't love NMH's On Avery Island, but I didn't recall much of this exchange. Then again, until reading the 33 1/3 series book on the album by Kim Cooper, I had no recollection that the album is largely based on Magnum's reading of the diary of Anne Frank. I certainly never got that sense from the album itself, though I've long been someone who hears lyrics as ancillary to music rather than the other way around, and often am surprised at the content of songs long after everyone else has figured them out simply because I finally got around to reading along or paying closer attention.

The Pitchfork package also links to the site's 2002 interview with Magnum, his first in years at the time and last that I'm aware of, as well as a piece that solicits comments about the album from a handful of indie artists that, aside from the guy behind Caribou, I've not heard much from.

Magnum still surfaces from time to time; McGonigal convinced the musician to contribute tracks from his collection of 78s to a CD that will accompany the forthcoming issue of his magazine, Yeti, curiosity about which was enough to get me to part with $12. What he won't do, it seems, is give fans what they really want, which is a true follow up. Good for him. How could compete, and why would he/we want it to?

Labels: criticism, music

The Morning News Tournament of Books is back, with 16 books set to square off bracket-style starting March 7.

There is an honest-to-God crime fiction novel among the picks, though I guarantee Laura Lippman's fine novel, What the Dead Know, will be tagged with the phrase "transcends the genre."

Who will win? My money is on National Book Award winner Denis Johnson. I haven't waded through his tome yet, but plan to the next time I have several days of uninterrupted reading time ahead of me... or after my sons graduate high school, whichever comes first.

I've read four of this year's picks thus far, and in addition to Lippman's gripping read, I can attest that Joshua Ferris's book is good but not a book of the year contender, Ian McEwan's book was perfectly fine but far from perfect, and Jonathan Lethem's book was a dreadful stumble by an otherwise wildly talented writer.

The tournament is fairly simple. Books are paired up in brackets, with a different judge for each pairing. The judge picks a winner, and that book moves on until there is only one. The three previous winners are David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Ali Smith’s The Accidental and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

This year's contenders are:

Run by Ann Patchett
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Petropolis by Anya Ulinich
Ovenman by Jeff Parker
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
New England White by Stephen L. Carter
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

Labels: books, criticism

The Village Voice's 2007 Pazz and Jop music critics poll results have been posted, and LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver edged out Radiohead's In Rainbows as top album of the year. I'm unmoved by the pick -- and come to think of it, by the disc itself -- wondering if there isn't a lemming like bit of me-tooism at play. I believe in the wisdom of crowds, and know that there surely must be something there worth the accolades, but what little time I've spent with the album left me cold.

My ballot can be found here. No surprises to be had for TIRBD readers, as my top 10 mirrors the one I posted here in December. I did include some favorite tracks when asked to list the year's top singles, though I don't have any idea if any were actually singles (or truly if such a thing even exists at this point). The overall singles list was heartening; the singles charts in general are so hip hop-centric that one wonders if anyone else listens to anything beyond that. Here, there is plenty of hip hop, but it is leavened by the White Stripes, Shins, Spoon and others.

My album list, save for Radiohead and the National, doesn't jibe as well with the masses, as most of my picks landed somewhere in the 40-60 range. The worst showing, no surprise, was Glenn Mercer's Wheels in Motion, which fell all the way to 389. Oh well, that's everyone else's loss.

I haven't spent much time beyond the lists, but there is plenty of fodder to wade through in the form of essays, voter comments and more. The snark has already begun elsewhere, but I'll take a pass. It's all in the name of helping people to learn about things they might have missed and offering greater context to enhance the enjoyment of what they have. Sounds like a worthy endeavor to me.

By the way, my same ballot, give or take a single or two, was submitted to the Idolator Pop '07 Poll (it was released Jan. 14, but I was at home with a new baby and wasn't on the web so completely missed it until now). The lists were similar, though this one unsurprisingly skews more indie/hipster than the Voice's. On these two and more, I chuckle about the inclusion of Miranda Lambert's album as the lone country entry in the upper reaches. Whatever it was she did to be the token country artist, Lambert should cherish it. Why, this is probably almost as lucrative as a story on NPR in terms of juicing a few thousand extra moved units.

Labels: criticism, music

OK, Madonna I get. the rest of them? Please.

The 2007 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was announced last week, and it was as disappointing as one would expect given the options. When the nominees were announced in September, I prognosticated the results.

I was three for five, correctly forecasting Madonna, the Dave Clark Five and Leonard Cohen. My misses are puzzling. How could the Beastie Boys not make it, or Afrika Bambaataa, while a second oldies act like the Ventures did? I would imagine the Beasties, to their credit, are seen as too young to make it, perhaps, but Bambaataa should have appealed to voters' sense of inclusion and diversity. Instead, they went for the popular-in-their-time but artistically less significant Ventures, who trod similar ground -- albeit in less pioneering fashion -- as Duane Eddy, who is already in the hall.

That leaves John Mellencamp. He's clearly a commercial success, and at times he was a critical success as well. American Fool, Uh-huh and Scarecrow were as good as any three albums made by a male solo artist in the early '80s, save for his closest musical forefather, Bruce Springsteen, whose The River, Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. are hard to top. But people aren't inducted into the hall of fame for a handful of really good albums -- at least, they shouldn't be. They should be inducted for long, continually challenging and creative careers, or for short bursts that are simply so revolutionary that they can't be denied. Mellencamp has enjoyed a long career, but it would be hard to argue that it has been anything more than a commercially popular artist for much of it.

As I wrote in September, it's going to be a long, dry period until the 2020s when the first commercially successful grunge and rock acts become eligible. Maybe the hall will take that time to deal with some glaring omissions and ignore the artistically bankrupt pap that will become eligible in the interim. Yeah, right.

Labels: criticism, music, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

On the occasion of writing my 100th post over at My Impression Now ("Glad Girls" got the honor), I thought I'd check back in to see how my peers in the catablog business are faring. When I last wrote about this in July, there were a few of the 23 known single artist song-by-song blogs going great guns, a few that already had fallen by the wayside and several of us in the middle writing when we had the chance.

Today, things are slower still. Only 10 of the 23 are active, mine included, while at least three have closed up shop permanently and the other 10 haven't published in a few months. I certainly don't judge; it's a challenge to come up with something new to say, and you certainly do so -- unless you're writing about Pearl Jam or R.E.M. -- for a very small, albeit dedicated audience.

I caught a second wind with my Guided by Voices blog in November, nearly doubling my output over the previous months to finally get to 100 on Monday. Of course, that leaves me with about 1,100 to go (more once Robert Pollard realizes he hasn't released anything in a couple of months and graces us with more music). It's a daunting task, but I have benefited as a fan by taking it on, for it makes me think about why I like or dislike the songs, and that analysis can deepen those feelings and make me appreciate the work all the more.

So here, as the year is drawing to a close, is a report on the known catablogs, all created since May when Matthew Perpetua got the ball rolling with his still excellent R.E.M. blog, Popsongs 07.

R.I.P.
Robynsongs - Robyn Hitchcok
Chrome Canyons - Wilco
Spring, Sprang, Sprung - T-Pain

M.I.A. (including month of last post)
All My Little Words - Magnetic Fields: June
Blursongs - Blur: August
Emotional Karaoke - Mountain Goats : July
Fridgebuzz/Radiostutters - Radiohead: October
Hyper-ballads - Bjork: July
More Words About Buildings and Songs - Talking Heads: July
Paraguay and Laos - Bluetones: August
Separated Out - Marillion: August
Ten Thousand Lies - Nine Inch Nails: June
So Misunderstood - Wilco: September

Still Going Strong
Crimes on Paper - Self
Fragments of a Cale Season - John Cale
I Can't Sing It Strong Enough - Pavement
More Than Ten - Pearl Jam
Music from a Bachelor's Den - Pulp
My Impression Now - Guided by Voices
One Imaginary Blog - Cure
Popsongs 07 - R.E.M.
Too Many Words - Low
Solar Prestige a Gammon - Elton John (69-77)

Labels: criticism, music, My Impession Now

OK, I'll admit it: I like the music of white guys. If they're bookish, or a bit too clever for their own good or back after a long layoff, so much the better. I've tried for diversity, tried to broaden my horizons, but my time is limited these days, so I seek out the aural equivalent of comfort food. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I'll peruse all of the dozens of other lists out there, look for some commonalities and continue to build my "to-be-heard" list so that when I do someday get some time, I'll know what to see out.

In the meantime, if smart white guys with guitars are your thing, you could do worse than to check out these 25 discs. As always, you get a sort of annotated top 10, a second 10, another handful and some comments about those that missed.

Overall, it felt like a good year for music. I'll be curious to see who tops the Idolator and Village Voice polls, because nothing really struck me as a runaway obvious best-album choice for the masses. My pick was easy, but I doubt Joe Henry cracks the top 25 most anywhere else. Sure, critics like to single out things that don't get airplay -- when they're not busy ironically touting mainstream pap because it's subversively derivative... or whatever -- but not white former alt-country also-rans on the edge of 50 who make more money producing than performing. That's fine: Joe can be my little secret.

For me, 2007 was the year of the welcome return. Henry was back after several years away from his solo career while producing, while Nick Lowe also returned after a long layoff. Seth Tiven, Dumptruck frontman, issued his first solo album this year, the great Solitude, after a few years away as well. Then there's Glenn Mercer, the former Feelies frontman, who came back after nine years away from recording and more than 15 years since the Feelies hung it up. Add to that nice discs by Ian Hunter, John Fogerty and Dinosaur Jr., and it's like the old folks home ran out of room and sent a bunch of 'em to the recording studio to sleep on cots.

OK, enough pontification. On to the list.

Joe Henry – Civilians
Any time Joe Henry enters the studio, you ought to clear a spot in your top 10 list. When he does so with a batch of his own songs, there’s little point in considering anything else for the top spot. With Civilians, Henry may well have crafted his best disc, one that seems a culmination of every twist, turn and blind alley of his career without rehashing any of it. He surrounds himself with different players each time out, and no two albums sound alike. Despite that, he has created an inimitable, yet readily identifiable sound of his own, and Civilians is a shining example of that excellence.
web site
Metacritic
TIRBD Monday Interview
"Time is a Lion" MP3

Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha
Andrew Bird’s music is a strange amalgam of old-time string band, soul, rock, folk and classical elements that mesh to create something unique and readily identifiable. On Armchair Apocrypha, Bird offers the best synthesis of all those disparate elements, presenting it with his strongest batch of songs. Here, all of his tools are used to maximum effect, the Jeff Buckley vocals, the sweet whistle, the violin used in myriad ways and the obtuse way of looking at a melody. The only thing better is seeing him live, accompanying himself with a sequencer that allows for a jaw-dropping one-man band performance.
web site
Metacritic
"Heretics" MP3

The National – Boxer
As with Okkervil River (see below), the National followed a breakthrough album with something less expansively startling but probably more lasting. Boxer is a sublime album, one that actually seems to contract a bit from the sonic landscape of Alligator, refining that sound to create something more insular and self-contained. The focus is still on Matt Berninger’s vocals, his gruff tone helping one to realize what Tindersticks would sound like with a spur to the side, though the rest of the band is integral to the sound, its restrained playing conveying Berninger’s tales of hope giving way to despair. It’s the kind of album people will find two decades from now and wonder why it wasn’t huge at its time.
web site
Metacritic
"Fake Empire" MP3

Radiohead – In Rainbows
By the time the dust settled in the grand discussion about how we got to first hear In Rainbows, it seemed as if most people forgot to talk about what we were hearing. The what, of course, is Radiohead's seventh album, one that nicely synthesizes much of what came before it while still sounding fresh, a sort of "all the colors of the rainbow" sort of moment if Radiohead could ever be that obvious. It does continue the path of Hail to the Thief in its shedding of overt ambient and electronic overtones, as if Thom Yorke exorcised those tendencies -- for the time being -- with his 2006 solo debut, The Eraser. While Radiohead is never likely to make another OK Computer, for the first time since, it has made a record that seems to indicate that the band is similarly comfortable in its own skin, and that's a beautiful thing.
web site
Metacritic

Josh Ritter – The Historical Conquests of…
Ritter took some heat this year from people who actually criticized him for making an album that was too good, too polished and too poised. Sure, this lacks grit, a clearly self-conscious stab at making a great album. But guess what? Somewhere along the way he succeeded. He shares with Okkervil River's Will Sheff the title of year's best lyricist, and wedded those enthusiastically poetic words to some of the year's best melodies. The progression this young artist has made over his five albums is startling, and I'd imagine that we'll look back on this the way we do early work by... well who has made five increasingly great albums and not imploded? I'm sure Ritter will be criticized for the hubris of a long career, too.
web site
Metacritic
"To the Dogs or Whoever" MP3

Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog
Sam Beam’s earliest recordings were hushed, intimate affairs, and it would have been reasonable to expect that this was his best – and perhaps only – forum. Then he hit the road with Calexico and seemed reborn as a sort of low-key Dylan circa the Rolling Thunder Revue or Van Morrison of our time. The experimentation, energy and volume (both in terms of sound and the sheer amount of stuff on the tape) carried over the The Shepherd’s Dog, a disc that makes all that came before it seem like a black and white snapshot in contrast with its vivid 35mm Technicolor. Snapshots are nice and have their place, but this is Cinemascope and it only hints at where Beam might eventually land.
web site
Metacritic
"Innocent Bones" MP3

Okkervil River – The Stage Names
There’s no, um, fifth-year senior slump here. After breaking through big time with its fourth album, Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River refines things and delivers with The Stage Name. Singer and songwriter Will Sheff continues to harness the wild caterwaul of his instrument, using it to great effect on these songs that ostensibly deal with rock music and performance. These are clever compositions, but never to the detriment of a consistent listen. From the number song name check of “Plus Ones” to the ingeniously organic sprouting of “Sloop John B” in “John Allyn Smith Sails,” this is a lovingly crafted disc that rewards repeat listens and shows that Okkervil River has reached its potential while leaving plenty of territory to explore.

web site
Metacritic
"Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe" MP3

Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon is the only act on this list that didn’t better its last outing. In equaling it, however, it easily earned a spot in the Top 10. Since Girls Can Tell, Britt Daniel has been honing his music, stripping it down to the barest essentials on Kill the Moonlight before starting to rebuild things – very slowly – on Gimme Fiction and Ga⁵. No longer can he sneak up on listeners; he’s a known quantity who satisfies rather than stuns, getting by simply by offering another batch of great songs. The instrumentation on “The Underdog” shows where he can take things if he chooses, while “The Ghost of You Lingers” proves there is still a bit of territory left to explore.

web site
Metacritic
"The Underdog" video

Nick Lowe - At My Age
Lowe has aged quite gracefully, actually, adding this great disc to what is becoming the strongest part of his catalog. Leaving behind the broad jokes and pub-rock glory of his career peak, he has recast himself as an adult crooner who sings songs the coolest hipster wouldn’t be embarrassed to spin. Mixing covers rendered as lovingly as his own compositions with some of his own strongest songs to date, Lowe proves the fiction of one of the standouts from his last disc, “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide.” Rather, he has stepped up to deliver another gem.
web site
Metacritic
"The Club" stream

Glenn Mercer – Wheels in Motion
This disc defines the term “welcome return.” Its 11 songs sound current at the same time they feel perfectly aligned in spirit with Mercer's two-decade-old Feelies work. You feel right at home from the start, as the acoustic guitar strums and organic drums drive the song. Things ebb and flow nicely over the course of the next nine songs, as Mercer shows off his delicate guitar work and uncanny way of creating compelling melodies with a limited vocal range. By the time he reaches the end, with an inspired medley of George Harrison's "Within You, Without You" and "Love You To," it becomes clear that Mercer hasn't lost a step.
web site
TIRBD Monday Interview

The next 10:

11. Caribou – Andorra
12. Chuck Prophet – Soap and Water
13. Richard Thompson – Sweet Warrior
14. Bruce Springsteen – Magic
15. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
16. Josh Rouse – Country Mouse City House
17. Thurston Moore – Trees Outside the Academy
18. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
19. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings – 100 Days, 100 Nights
20. Danny & Dusty – Cast-Iron Soul

Five more in no order:

Crowded House – Time on Earth
Band of Horses – Cease to Begin
Mark Olson – Salvation Blues
Seth Tiven – Solitude
Graham Parker – Don’t Tell Columbus

And now for the part where I list the albums I thought would be on the list above. First up, Steve Earle, whose Washington Square Serenade seemed great -- on paper. Shaking things up with a Dust Brother behind the board sounded like a great idea, but bells and whistles -- or in this case, a drum machine -- can't polish subpar songs. That and the fact that Earle spends so much time touting his new wife, Alison Moorer -- yes, Steve, she's a dish, but you're just this side of Dennis Kucinich in the "look, a babe married me, I'm not a weirdo" sweepstakes, and that's kind of embarrassing --add up to a pretty boring album from a guy who has been a lot of things in his career, but rarely that... The New Pornographers are clearly a talented bunch, and I admire anyone willing to mess with their formula, but Challengers, from its godawful cover art to the inclusion of three Dan Bejar songs -- if I want to hear Bejar, and I don't, I'd listen to Destroyer -- is simply an overly crafted, joyless exercise in style... The Shins made a good record with Wincing the Night Away, but not a great one. "Phantom Limb" is among the best songs of the year, but where past great songs were among peers, here it's head and shoulders above, and that's disappointing... How can we miss the White Stripes if they won't go away? As with the New Pornographers, I admire Jack White for continuing to mess with the formula, and Icky Thump certainly has its moments, but it feels more like an exercise than an album. Artists like Bruce Springsteen get in a rut where they try so hard to make a Bruce Springsteen album that they forget to make music they love; on the flip side, these younger artists sometimes seem to be trying so hard not to make a New Pornographers or White Stripes album that they forget to play to their strengths and embrace what got them here in the first place.

A few artists came close and are definitely in the rotation on any "best of '07" playlist around Chez TIRBD, but they just didn't make the cut. It was nice to get Neil Young back -- the Young that cares little about convention and is willing to throw something together because it feels good. Chrome Dreams II isn't a great Young album, but it's better than I'd have hoped for at this point... Ian Hunter made a strong return on Shrunken Heads, including the great track, "I Am What I Hated When I Was Young," that embraces his age and experience, rather than run away from it like most artists of his vintage seem wont to do... Speaking of which, it was nice to see John Fogerty blow the roof off on Revival, a not-so-coyly named return to form for the Creedence chief. "I Can't Take It No More," might not be "Fortunate Son," but it's still a blast of welcome vitriol... Dinosaur Jr. joined the "improbable reunion club" founded by the Pixies, and actually cranked out a decent album in the process. Beyond has some great moments, including a couple of Lou Barlow's strongest songs in recent memory.

Lastly, two young'uns laid the groundwork for nice long careers with some impressive debuts this year. Jason Isbell is no stranger to rock fans, having penned some of the strongest tracks on the Drive-by Truckers' four most recent albums, but stepping out solo for the first time with Sirens of the Ditch, he proved he can deliver more than two or three songs every couple of years... the Broken West also didn't technically debut this year, having released an EP as the Brokedown before signing to Merge and issuing the great I Can't Go On, I'll Go On this year. But that disc came completely out of left field for me, a fully-formed and catchy blast of pop that stayed in the player for quite a while this spring. It fades as the album progresses, which kept it off the list above, but with a few more songs like "Down in the Valley," they'll soon be in the upper reaches of lists like this one. Read more about the band and singer Ross Flournoy in this TIRBD Monday Interview.

Labels: criticism, lists, music

The New York Times issued its list of the 10 best books of the year today, and if good intentions count, I have four of them covered.

Truth told, I've read only one of the 10, Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End. I interviewed Ferris about his debut novel earlier this year. The Times and I aren't alone in our praise for the book; it was nominated for a National Book Award this fall.

The second of the fiction books I plan to read is Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke, which won the National Book Award for fiction this year. The book has been in my possession, but I let it go for the time being because I doubt I'll be able to carve out the time to dedicate to its 600+ pages anytime soon. Someday...

The two nonfiction books on the list that I hope to get to soon are Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise, an overview and analysis of music in the 20th century, and Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, a book that promises a look at the "Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression." My grandparents lived that life, and I'm curious to learn more about it.

The best-of season is now in full swing, and it will be interesting to see if any consensus is reached.

Labels: books, criticism

Let me be the first to say that Bruce Springsteen beat Sasha Frere-Jones to the punch by a few weeks and with a more concise (and certainly more rocking) testimony about the lack of rhythm in indie rock, and went further in his pursuit of a solution. Frere-Jones lit up the blogosphere with his New Yorker essay, "A Paler Shade of White," in which he wrote, "I’ve spent the past decade wondering why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties."

What he is getting at, taking 3,500 words to do so, is that some indie rock bands (read: Arcade Fire), don't have much if any soul to their sound, thus rendering them "white." Other bands (read: LCD Soundsystem) have some rhythm and swing to their sound, thus rendering them, according to Frere-Jones' word-of-the-day calendar vocabulary, the spawn of musical miscegenation. Frere-Jones wants to be able to dance at an indie rock show, it seems, but isn't willing to venture out to see anyone not already approved by -- mindblower coming -- Sasha Frere-Jones. While he heaps praise upon the angular and disjointed art rock of countless acts -- Arcade Fire among them, though the praise is less "heaped" than "grudging" in this case -- it seems he doesn't really like to listen to them and wishes there were other bands that had a bit of beat to their sound.

Even if one limits things to the hipster-approved indie band list curated virtually by Frere-Jones and his ilk, there is plenty of rhythm to be had, and, despite Frere-Jones' admonishments to the contrary, risks being taken. Spoon, Of Montreal, the Hold Steady, Joe Henry, Chuck Prophet... OK, those last couple aren't getting much ink for their fantastic new discs, but they certainly have everything Frere-Jones finds lacking elsewhere: "a trace of soul, blues, reggae, or funk." Ah, but they aren't as hip as Battles, so they don't count, do they, Sasha?

Though he isn't indie, Springsteen seems to be the elephant in the room here, because many acts these days draw inspiration from his music. Springsteen, original though he may sound to most, essentially found a way to bludgeon R'n'B bar band sounds into submission with his own wall of sound. On his fantastic new disc, Magic, he returns to that sound after nearly 25 years away from it, and offers what I see as pretty pointed commentary on this issue, even if his intent was miles away (and most likely self-referential). On the lead track, "Radio Nowhere," he sings:

I was trying to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushing the last lone American night

A literal reading would suggest that Springsteen was in the car and could only find post-rock on his Sirius Radio (is there a Tortoise channel?). That wasn't what he wanted, and it was seriously harshing his mellow.

He goes on to ask "Is there anybody alive out there," and proclaims himself to be "just searching for a world with some soul," before getting to the true hook of the song where he shouts again and again, "I just want to hear some rhythm." Funny how Springsteen's take -- advantage though he might have thanks to the bass and drum (as opposed to bass 'n' drum) thump behind him -- is so much more soulful than Frere-Jones' pasty whine. He is willing to go back to the start of the recorded history of rock 'n' roll, singing that he is "searching for a Mystery Train," which could be both a shout out to the work of Greil Marcus and, more likely (tongue taken out of cheek here), a nod to the original popular musical miscegenator, Elvis Presley.

The Boss doesn't stop here, of course. As if on some spooky parallel with Frere-Jones, he opts to do more than pen a strongly worded letter to the editor about the situation and takes guitar in hand to help solve the perceived problem by bringing the aforementioned offenders, Arcade Fire, on stage with him to show them how to add a bit of backbeat to their sometimes fussy sound (If Frere-Jones can't dance to this, there's no help for him).

So while Frere-Jones admittedly makes some strong and interesting points about the fact that there is significantly less cross-pollination among musical genres -- missing a real culprit by ignoring the narrow focus of what has evolved to become a truly awful mainstream radio environment -- he over-generalizes to the extent that he undercuts his own argument at nearly every turn. Meanwhile, Springsteen puts his money where his mouth is, betting big on the 2 and the 4, offering a way out of the pale white and back into the dark.

Labels: criticism, music

Maybe now someone will bother to actually read it.

Angry parents in Cumberland, R.I., convinced officials there to ban an essay originally assigned in a high school class. The essay, "How to Kill a Boy That Nobody Likes," was written by author Will Clarke and is featured in the anthology When I Was a Loser, edited by John McNally.

The mother of a 14-year-old girl who had received the assignment led the charge. She claimed that Clarke's essay was pornographic, and said that it wasn't enough that the teacher quickly agreed that her daughter could complete the assignment by reading something else. She thus appointed herself the school district's morality police.

"I'm not willing to lower my morals to prove a point," she told the Pawtucket Times. "I feel it is my duty to ensure that not just my child is never handed this kind of vulgar material, but (that) your children never receive it as well."

I wonder if she or any of the other detractors has actually bothered to read the essay. Probably not, since most keep referring to it as a "story" as opposed to an essay, and never seem to mention details beyond the satiric title and a few key juicy bits. Thing is, the piece, in which Clarke tells of his early school days as someone mercilessly picked on before he applied a lesson about subliminal advertising and used it to win a life-changing student body office, is just the kind of thing high school students should be reading.

McNally has risen to the defense of his book and Clarke, pointing out that many classic literary works -- including those by Shakespeare, Chaucer and Salinger -- contain bawdy language and questionable passages that can be taken out of context to prove a similar point. Here's hoping that argument doesn't backfire with this populace that seems unable to understand irony, satire or literary allusion, driving them to move to ban the work of those and others right along with Clarke. The hope of course, is that just as with everything else people ban "for the good of the children," it will spur those kids to seek it out all the more.

Labels: books, criticism, Idiocracy

The capacity of people to misread satire is alive and well. Author John McNally reports on his blog that When I Was a Loser, a collection of essays about high school and adolescence that he edited, has raised the hackles of some overly literal parents in Rhode Island.

The essay in question, "How to Kill a Boy That Nobody Likes," might sound provocative and unfit for high school reading, but if you bother to read beyond the title, it becomes clear that it is exactly the kind of thing high school kids should be reading. In the essay, Will Clarke writes about a how, as a high school student, he realized that the language of marketing can change people's perceptions. He uses that new skill to run for class office, a move to "kill" the boy nobody likes, namely, himself (not-so-affectionally referred to as "Will-tard").

A teacher had assigned the essay, it seems, causing some parents to balk, calling the piece "pornographic," and demand that it be removed from the lesson.

While the reactions are perfect examples of knee-jerk political posturing at its best, it does give McNally's book some well-deserved exposure.

Clarke weighs in on his blog, offering tongue-in-cheek support to the would-be book banners: "String up that teacher and the principal, too. They're just trying to get them kids to love reading and who needs that? That might actually get them to thinking, and we all know where thinking leads you....straight to hell or Harvard."

Labels: books, criticism